Guerilla Gardening 4

This all started last June when the council dumped some planters with low-grade soil at the ends of the streets that had been closed by the controversial low-traffic neighbourhoods in East Oxford. I transplanted flowers from my garden that would otherwise have died under builders' boards and was touched by the lovely comments I got from strangers.

A week later I transplanted a mature rose that had resisted a brutal pruning and one of the plant lovers, Z, was there again. I was pessimistic about its chances of survival but he told me to be positive. Ever since, when he parks at the end of my street to collect takeaways for delivery, we've chatted about life in general and in the autumn, when when he told me the rose was as dead as could be, I told him to wait for the spring.

I haven't seen him for a while so I don't know whether he's seen this but I guess when we meet again we'll have a little dance together.

There's a lone snowdrop too and I suspect there will be grape hyacinths quite soon.